Abortion was adopted as a rallying issue because it could unite disparate cultural conservatives
Evidence
In those earlier days of the emerging New Right, Balmer reports, activist Robert Billings, in correspondence with Falwell, marveled with delight that abortion would “pull together many of our ‘fringe’ Christian friends.” Falwell, Weyrich, and their fellow operatives at last recognized that support for reproductive rights from feminists and liberals “had imbued the abortion issue with associations that could be tapped to mobilize a wide array of cultural conservatives,” according to Linda Greenhouse and Reva B. Siegel. Five years after the Roe v. Wade decision, Jerry Falwell began denouncing abortion, along with same-sex intimacy and pornography, in his sermons. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 258
Categorization
- QUESTION: How late did abortion enter other denominations’ political programs — does the same strategic-cooptation pattern hold elsewhere?
- XREF: connects to: The religious right’s founding coalition was initially indifferent to abortion. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 234; The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 121; The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 119 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters
#corroborates(0.85) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 121 - The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation
#corroborates(0.82) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 119 - Internal Religious Right correspondence celebrated abortion as an effective organizing issue
#exemplifies(0.80) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 130 - Evangelical opposition to abortion was initially uncertain and politically constructed
#corroborates(0.78) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 160 - Catholics entered whiteness by importing abortion politics into conservative Protestantism
#qualifies(0.75) — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 39